My blog would be incomplete without mentioning the band which first introduced me to both classic rock and alternative/industrial rock when I was a teenager. You can find all basic info about then in Wikipedia, and I'll add that I was a fan of them and their frontman Yuri Shevchuk when I was 13-15 y.o. This video, which I saw on TV for the first time in early 2000, was probably the first alternative rock video I've seen and liked:

It blew my mind because it was so different from all the pop music videos which I've seen on TV before. Of course, I discovered Rammstein, Linkin Park and other bands of this kind shortly after that, but DDT remained my favourites for a long time. However, they became so popular not due to songs like the one above, but due to much more melodic and catchy stuff which they were playing in early 1990s. Here's, for example, their best-known song which was so popular that Shevchuk even grew tired of playing it live:

One more video from the same period, very simple yet surprisingly scary:

Like all popular bands, DDT has many devout fans and many haters as well. I must agree that some of Shevchuk's behaviour (mostly his "war on pop music" and some of his political activity) is suitable for a teenager but not for a grown man, but it hasn't much to do with his music. As for the music, he's frequently criticised for being rather a singer-songwriter with an electric guitar rather than a proper rock musician, but it isn't a big problem for me - I'm much more interested in neofolk and post-punk than in classic rock, after all. Some of DDT's albums can be indeed quite boring, especially if you don't understand the lyrics, but their discography is very varied in terms of sound. I chose this album to post mostly because it's a concept work strongly influenced by the industrial rock of the 90s, but it also has a lot of less aggressive-sounding, ballad-type tracks:

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About this blog

I created this blog mostly because I wanted to practise my English skills, and to showcase the industrial, gothic, punk, metal, neofolk and progressive rock scene of Russia/ex-USSR and Eastern Europe (especially Hungary) in the meanwhile.

As you can see, this blog doesn't take itself seriously enough, but I hope I'm doing good enough with my reviews even if my proficiency in English is limited. Along with the aforementioned stuff from Eastern Europe, I occasionally post some classic and rare albums that aren't to be missed, and generally whatever I want. Other categories of note:

* finno-ugric rarities - various music (including pop) in minor Finno-Ugric languages which I'm interested in because of my heritage. The music from Hungary, Finland and Estonia can be found under the respective categories;

* lo-fi - various poorly recorded demos from before 2000 that are of historical importance. Most of these demos come from the USSR era, so you might want to check out the USSR category as well.

As of now, I try to post only music that has already been made free by the artists themselves, or the rare old releases that are out of print. But if you're an artist and would like me to remove the download links of your work, just contact me using the form below.

Sorry, I don't do reviews by request, I don't have the time. Moreover, I think the bands that feel the need to advertise themselves by sending their demos to as many blogs as possible are usually just plain boring. If you want to contact me for any other reason, use the contact form below.

It should be obvious enough that reviewing anything on here doesn't equals endorsement of artists' personal views. This especially concerns neofolk and martial industrial. It'd be fair enough to say that I have the same approach to the political and religious topics in these genres as Laibach do.

Many of the female musicians featured on my blog are amateur models, and in many cases their modelling work is no less interesting than their music. Right now I'm working on giving it a separate section of the blog (just in case if anyone wants my review to be only about their music and not their looks). The work is in progress, check back later if you're interested.

The title of my blog comes from a song by The Kovenant (album "SETI", 2003).